AME church rips vote on Holder

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most prominent black denominations in the country, is blasting the House vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress last week, comparing the move to the “evil strategies employed following the Reconstruction era.”

The House voted 255-67 in finding Holder in contempt of Congress last week for his failure to hand over some documents in the botched Fast and Furious gun-walking investigation. While the vote was led by Republican lawmakers, 17 Democrats crossed the political aisle to hold Holder in contempt.

In a resolution adopted last week and posted on AME’s website on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal, the AME expressed its “profound disagreement” with the contempt vote and also suggested that Holder had been unfairly targeted for his effort to curtail voter suppression laws.

“Those who have held Attorney General Holder, America’s first African-American attorney general, in contempt have been consistently and systematically disrespectful of the attorney general and of President Barack Obama,” the resolution read. “The attack against Attorney General Holder comes after his stated intent to determine whether recent laws passed to combat non-existent voter fraud are actually efforts at voter suppression that violate the Voting Rights Act.”

The church considers the contempt vote “political in nature and designed, as were the evil strategies employed following the Reconstruction era, to suppress the votes of those who might change the balance of political power in Congress and in the White House,” the resolution also said.